My (26-year-old) boyfriend has started wearing overly patterned tops because they are "ironic Christmas jumpers". I think they make him look like a weird grandad. Who's right? Kate, London

Neither of you. There is no need, correspondent Kate, to resort to vaguely ageist slurs when critiquing your boyfriend's style, "weird granddad", indeed. Poor fashion choices are hardly limited to the elderly, and you, of all people, should know that. Criticise your chap's choices all you like, but no need to throw grandad under the bus en route.

As for your boyfriend – oh dear, oh dear. It's not the jumpers I mind, it's the claim of "irony". Not since Alanis Morissette crooned about bad weather on her wedding day has anyone proffered such a misconceived concept of irony. Considering how simple the definition of irony truly is – using words to convey the opposite of what you mean – it's amazing what a hash people make of it. But whereas Morissette confused irony with just plain bad luck (except for the bit about the 10,000 spoons – that was straight out surrealism), your boyfriend is confusing it with embarrassment.

Like many people before him, particularly those of the male persuasion in the region of Britain, your chap is simply so ashamed of genuine emotion – in this case, a fondness for patterned jumpers – that he is attempting to cloak it by insisting he is being ironic or, as he would put it, "ironic". He is not being "ironic" "about" "Christmas" "jumpers" – he loves Christmas jumpers. And I can't really blame him. I have such a fondness for patterned jumpers myself that most days in the winter I look like a walking test pattern (this is one and perhaps the only reason why patterned jumpers generally work better on men than on women. Biology's a real bitch sometimes).

I can, though, blame him for the "irony". "Irony", as opposed to irony, is one of the great modern-day irritations, along with the phrase "internet craze" and using "-gate" as a suffix for scandal (personally, I think the prefix Water- should sue for at least half of -gate's profits.) In my experience, it is a pose especially favoured by two seemingly different but often overlapping demographics: hipsters and young British men. Hipsters, a profoundly dull and irritating subset of the populace, are so insecure about their personal preferences that they, first, all adopt the same tastes as one another, making them remarkably homogenous for a group that claims to be original and counter-cultural and, two, only profess those tastes "ironically". Much more can be said on this matter, but it is Kate's boyfriend who needs help this week, not hipsters.

Young English men are especially prone to "irony", not, I suspect, out of insecurity but out of simple awkwardness. England, you see, is, as a nation collectively embarrassed by overt displays of emotion, especially positive emotion, and, as anyone who has ever spent some time in America can affirm ("Oh my Gahhhhd, this coffee is AWESOME!"), there is something to be said for that. But the English tendency can and often does go too far, not least when it comes to the game of lurrrrve.

There is a reason Four Weddings and a Funeral was so popular – despite the chronic miscasting of Andie Mac-Can't-Act-Dowell – that it spawned a reality TV show 15 years after the movie came out, and that is the recognisable nugget of truth in Hugh Grant's inability to admit that he loves a woman without burying it inside a David Cassidy quote. In fact, it is a rare line of dialogue in that film that is not wrapped in the snug swaddling of "irony", but it is in regards to love where one can best see the reasoning behind it. Namely, the fear of rejection and ensuing imagined mockery.

But this reliance on the crutch of "irony" does not refer solely to the love of a ladypartner – it can also refer to the love of a record or, say, a style statement that is not considered cool. This is just tragic because it means the "ironic" chap will insist that Lionel Richie is only on his iPod "ironically" and that he only "likes" patterned jumpers, you know, "ironically". These poor constricted, self-loathing creatures.

But it's not all bad. Anybody, especially any twentysomething English man, who professes a love for something "ironically" might be trying to hide their true feelings but at least their true feelings are still there. It's the ones who genuinely do only wear "cool" (and I mean that ironically, not "ironically") clothes and listen to "cool" music are the ones who really have no soul. So next time your boyfriend insists his jumper is "ironic", Kate, just give him an understanding kiss on the cheek and buy him another one for Christmas. He'll love it, unironically.